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“If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.” - Bill Gates
The restaurant industry over the last decade or so has witnessed a major change in the way its processes are carried out. It is a constantly evolving playing field. Business practices that used to be prevalent at one point in time are becoming phased out at a pace quicker than ever, in favour of faster and more efficient ways of operation.
So, what has led to such a transformation? What resulted in the shifting of offline practices to online ones?
Indeed, it is the rising pace of competition and the industries becoming more and more internet-dependent and technology savvy. Had there been no internet services penetration and such a high mobile and laptop adoption rate among global consumers, the competition across industries would have been way less than it is today.
But, as a matter of fact, the times have changed drastically. The world business is getting majorly dominated by internet services and the disruptive technologies that come up every day. There is absolutely no denying the fact that technology and business are getting inextricably interwoven with each other.
So, behaving as futuristic businesses do, would you not want yourself to be included in the list of those businesses who, owing to their disruptive technological methods and practices and their rapid adoption, give their industry-leading businesses a serious run for their money?
Businesses having a keen eye for technological details, ought not to forget that-
Once a new technology rolls over, if you are not part of the steamroller, you are part of the road.
Thus, going with the flow and catching up with the technological standards that the restaurant industry is racing towards, it becomes binding on us businesses to partake equally in it, so that the industry continues to flourish and the likes of us businesses, get to make profits out of it.
As is technology-business interweaving, so is the technology-software link. If businesses adopt a particular technology, that they must be dealing with software too becomes obvious.
But only a few businesses know that their software capabilities may be a reason either for their roaring success or a hapless failure.
When you are dealing with software, you are not just dealing with the merits that come along with it. Instead, you are dealing with a set of challenges too.
And an IT-enabled restaurant business pretty well knows that the challenges may come in lot many ways viz software incapability, untimely bottlenecks or lags during operations, etc.
The more efficient and easier to operate the software is, the minimal is the ill-timed hindrances and thus lesser are its challenges.
So, all the budding restaurant businesses in need of reliable and robust software, must first know what is online food delivery/ restaurant delivery software and what functions is it supposed to perform?
1. Online food delivery software: Knowing the score
Food delivery software or an online restaurant delivery software can be defined as a tool or a set of programs or procedures associated with the operation of a computer system that enables food delivery businesses, such as restaurants, cafes, etc. streamline their order delivery mechanism.
1.1 Functions of a food/ hyperlocal delivery software
- It automates food delivery processes viz a viz receiving customer orders, processing order payments and assigning orders to respective delivery personnel.
- It enables businesses to showcase their food menu online.
- It also helps in receiving orders from business websites and mobile applications.
- The software moreover, records and analyzes all order delivery data for processing and reporting.
Note- Before choosing software for your business, it should be remembered that a good hyperlocal delivery software offers valuable functional and operational insights to help online restaurant delivery companies make informed business decisions.
Moreover, rushing into buying a hyperlocal restaurant delivery software or an application for your business would do more damage than good.
It is important to stay careful and ensure that the food delivery software you intend to buy is capable enough to provide your business few of the following sets of benefits and features.
- Increased customer reach: A good software allows businesses in the food industry to accept online orders via business websites and mobile applications. This empowers customers to order more food online from various restaurants or food joints of their liking.
- Customer-friendly: A good restaurant delivery software offers great flexibility to the customers. With easy access to the online available food menu and the freedom to customize their meals, it offers something to customers to be glad about and feels important. This results in customers accessing the website even more.
- Offers great flexibility to businesses: A futuristic software allows heedful businesses to change or update food menu items and prices at their whim. Not just this, but it also enables them to add images of delectable food items or other relevant business-boosting add-ons on the website.
- Easy online ordering: A good food delivery software always provides a simplified application/ website experience to its users. The whole process right from arranging the food menu items on the website to getting it delivered to customers’ doorsteps is so smooth and well organized that ordering online becomes an experience to be savoured.
- Easy track of the delivery: A performing restaurant delivery software is so comprehensively developed that tracking your orders is as easy as one-two-three.
- Optimized route management: Often, good software will find out the shortest route available for food delivery thereby providing your business with more time for other things, while doing a timely delivery for the customers. An efficient software also considers real-time road traffic situations and also re-routes drivers suggesting the quickest way to reach the customers.
- Integration: The restaurant delivery software you wish to buy must integrate well with the existing business applications. The better the integration, the more managed are the customer orders and inventory, etc.
- Mobile application: If you are able to get a mobile application for your business, the software company may offer you a menu that is optimized for mobiles, manages orders and provides delivery order updates in real-time, live location tracking of the delivery person, etc.
- Support services: The nature of support services your software provider gives help you get started with the software and deal with associated technicalities that come along with it. Further, it helps resolve any technical issues or lags your business may face later during operations.
- Free from system error: An efficient and robust software will be less prone to system errors and software crashes.
- Multiple payment options: It should offer the facility of paying through multiple payment gateways to help ease making transactions.
2. Trends and statistics behind the phenomenal rise in food delivery services
Small facts lead to great knowing and knowing is all a futuristic business would want
The pandemic of covid has constituted one of the major reasons as to why people have chosen to go for online deliveries, lately. And it has been learnt that strategically-agile restaurants have quickly picked up on this trend. According to software advice, the search for food delivery software has increased 179% on their website between the months of February and March 2020. The pandemic has already pushed the food delivery industry a few years into the future, as the number of consumers ordering online food grew by a whopping extent during covid times.
One of the leading grocery delivery service companies, Instacart, asserted that it obtained its first monthly profit in April 2020, netting $ 10 million, and its CEO said that it had passed its year 2022 goals. Instacart added 300,000 more ‘shoppers’, riders responsible for picking up and delivery groceries, in the first half of 2020. At the end of 2019, it employed less than 100,000 people. It hired around 350,000 people more in 2020, with $35 billion in grocery sales.
Sources: Statista
So, the reading on the wall is clear. The food delivery/ restaurant delivery industry is witnessing a similar surge in online orders through applications and software.
And guess what is the reason for them preferring to order food online so often? Convenience, of course.
Having a restaurant meal delivered at your home is above everything else, convenient. In fact, convenience is actually one of the nine secondary human needs that they acquire during their lifetime.
“Scientists back up the fact that ‘convenience,’ amongst all, is the most convenient factor influencing food industry statistics.”
In fact, the principal of Technomic- prominent research and consulting firm, and a leader in food service consumer tracking has this to say about consumers’ level of seeking convenience- “It’s a lot of people who do not want to go out to a restaurant for the occasion. We hear from drivers how often people answer the door in their pyjamas”.
Another report on digital food ordering statistics conducted by UBS goes on to state that- “Online ordering has started to become the norm, thanks to the convenience, accuracy and ability to integrate payments. At scale, ubiquitous on-demand and subscription delivery of prepared food could potentially spell the end of cooking at home.”
So, how braced up is your business with the right software so as to provide that requisite convenience customers have habitually started to look for?
Or to put it across directly, How do you plan to conveniently feed and satisfy a growing ‘generation C’ population?
Note- Generation C consumers are ‘digital natives’ who have integrated technology and allied aspects into their everyday lives so much so that they turn to the internet instinctively and extensively to do any number of things.
The below provided data and statistics gives us a deeper insight into online food ordering trends and restaurant delivery statistics. In one of the articles on growing trends of online food delivery published in January 2022, it was reported that since 2014, digital ordering and delivery has grown 300% faster than dine-in traffic
In the similar article, increasing number of figures were reported on
- How frequently do people order food for delivery?
- 60% of U.S consumers order delivery or take out once a week
- 86% of consumers are using delivery services at least once per month
- 51% use delivery services to purchase meals from casual dining restaurants”
- How much are people willing to pay for food delivery?
- 34% of consumers spend at least $50 per order when ordering food online. On average a person spends around $16-30 in a full-service restaurant.
- 20% of consumers say they spend more on off-premise orders compared to a regular dine-in experience.
3. The future of online food delivery business
With what is obvious from the above-mentioned data and statistics, is the fact that online restaurant delivery business is galloping at a pace much rapid than ever. A study reveals that-31% of restaurateurs said they planned to keep investing in online food delivery, suggesting the fact they think that the demand for this restaurant delivery will stick around even after the covid-19 pandemic.
Whereas, another data revealed that online food delivery will translate roughly to 40% of a restaurant’s total sales, by the end of the year 2025.
The data in the tables and bar graphs below is a thing to watch out for. What it predicts for the upcoming years is something that strategically watchful businesses will be in dire need of.
Such data in highly characteristic of a galloping food market. And if statistics are anything to go by, the global food delivery app market and the associated delivery services are going to take the world away by storm. In fact, these statistics reveal a powerful truth- the food delivery trends are here to stay.
So, given the fact that the momentum of online food delivery services is shifting at an unprecedented pace-
Would you want your restaurant delivery business or online food business to move along with the flow of the storm or risk going against it? There is a lot at stake if you stick with the latter case. As for the former case, read on to get the right software for your food business.
4. Making the most of this growing trend: Getting your food business software ready
Statistics and numbers are no good unless you have good people to analyze and then interpret their meaning and importance
As the number of people using the internet to order food grows, consumers worldwide continue to adapt to such changes thereby contributing to increased statistics. This makes way for the fact that online restaurants and food joints must brace up and reinvent newer ways of finding a place in this growing online marketplace, one of which is building a robust and efficient digital presence.
To enable this, companies have to have software that does all the hard work for them. Our software is one such product that is trustworthy, sturdy & strong in form and constitution and highly efficient because it has been made with due diligence, care and foresight.
So, will you not want software that gives your business a set-up which is sophisticated and beneficial?
Or don't you desire a software that offers your business unmatched convenience, reliability, and hassle-free doorstep delivery solutions? of course, every prudent business does and businesses that don't,are bound to get left out.
